وَعَلَى ٱللَّهِ قَصْدُ ٱلسَّبِيلِ وَمِنْهَا جَآئِرٌ وَلَوْ شَآءَ لَهَدَىٰكُمْ أَجْمَعِينَ
"Upon God rests the pointing of the straight way; and among the ways there is one that swerves. Had He willed He would have guided you all."
It must be recorded: the eighth verse enumerated the mounts, the tenth will enumerate water. A sentence about the way has come in between.
I give this as my own reading; its ground is the position of the verse: where mounts are spoken of it is natural that the road be spoken of; but the verse leaves the physical road and passes over to direction. The enumeration slides from the place to be reached to the bearing to be held. And in the fifteenth verse subul (ways) will come back, this time in the physical sense. The sūra uses the same word on two planes.
The concrete sense of the root: to head straight in one direction; and to be middling, balanced. Qaṣd — heading towards, intent; muqtaṣid — one who holds the middle way; iqtiṣād — moderation. The root occurred at Luqmān, 31/19 (wa'qṣid fī mashyik — be moderate in your walking) and at Luqmān, 31/32 (fa-minhum muqtaṣid).
| Reading | Sense |
|---|---|
| 1 | "The straight one of the ways" — a genitive with the force of an adjective |
| 2 | "The directing towards the way" — with the force of a verbal noun; the act of pointing |
وَمِنْهَا جَآئِرٌ — jāʾir, from the root ج-و-ر: to swerve, to bend aside, to depart from what is right. Jawr — injustice.
And the pronoun must be recorded: minhā — "of them". The verse does not say openly what the pronoun refers to; the lexicographers record that it is the ways, and that this is understood from the word sabīl carrying a plural sense as a generic noun.
The word order of the sentence sets up a balance: the pointing of the straight way rests upon God (wa ʿala'llāh), while the swerving way is named without an agent (wa minhā jāʾir). The one is taken upon Himself; of the other it is only said that it exists.
The same structure will come once more in the sūra, in the thirty-fifth verse (law shāʾa'llāhu mā ʿabadnā min dūnihī min shayʾ) — but there it is the addressees who frame the sentence, and they frame it as an excuse. This is an overlap verifiable within the sūra, and it will be treated at the thirty-fifth verse.
I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the comparison of these two occurrences: the same sentence, once in the mouth of the text and once in the mouth of the addressee. The text says it as a piece of knowledge; the addressee says it as a defence. The difference between them lies not in the truth of the sentence but in who uses it and for what.